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every year's advance of the State toward a higher plane of civilization 

 would not fail to increase. 



The question of the establishment of a State University is again 

 before the Legislature of California, and this time in a more tangible 

 form than ever before. Indeed it is understood that a site has been 

 selected, and there seems to be a general calling from all quarters 

 for some positive action which shall set the wheels in motion. In view 

 of these facts, I deem it more than ever justifiable in me to call atten 

 tion to the fact that the Geological Survey is a necessary preliminary 

 to the establishment of a University which can claim to be anything 

 more than a name. 



It is not from the standpoint of a Professor, or from any supposed 

 right to be heard, based on an intimate acquaintance with the organ 

 ization and management of several of our higher institutions of learn 

 ing, including both those connected with the various State Govern 

 ments, and those independent of them those counting the years of 

 their existence by hundreds, and the amount of their endowment by 

 millions, and those whose career has but just begun, and who are pro 

 portionately short of funds it is not, I say, on any such grounds as 

 these that I approach the subject; but simply as one called before 

 you to defend the Geological Survey, and who desires, as one of the 

 important points in this defense, to urge upon you the educational re 

 lations of our proposed work, not only as connected with the proposed 

 University, but with all our schools and institutions of learning. For 

 I take it that there is no institution of so low a grade that the leading 

 facts of the geography of the State should not be taught in it, and 

 that we should not have to rise very high in order to come to those 

 in which instruction should be given in the elements, at least, of 

 natural history. But it is to the proposed University that I especially 

 refer, as our work is more intimately connected with that than with 

 institutions of a lower grade. 



In a University established under the conditions which surround 

 us on the Pacific coast, it is not difficult to see that the practical will 

 have very much the upper hand over the theoretical and abstruse ; 

 that modern languages will outweigh the ancient, and that the nat 

 ural and physical sciences will be more cultivated than psychology 

 and metaphysics. There will be little call for Latin and less for 

 Greek ; but nature will be interrogated, and everything that aids in 

 familiarizing the student with her teachings will be in demand. The 

 scientific branches in which instruction will be most craved by the 

 student, will certainly be physical geography, geology, mineralogy, 



